


Save and Restore

by Legendaerie



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Canon Compliant, Coping, Frankenstein with AIs, Implied/Referenced Suicide, No Sexual Content, Other, RvB Angst War 2016, dealing with death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-05-24 17:44:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6161415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legendaerie/pseuds/Legendaerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on a prompt by firstofficerweenie: Delta being unable to accept York's death and attempting to create a stand-in program that never comes out 'right' enough for him.</p><p>---</p><p>Delta has never been alone before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Save and Restore

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2016 RvB Angst War! I have a weakness for sad AIs that has haunted me since Portal 2.
> 
> I make no claims to the accuracy of any programming/coding referenced here; apologies to anyone I offend with my creative liberties.
> 
> Shout out to Laurel for being a beta on like 12 hours notice! Thanks a bunch, babe!
> 
> EDIT: I PLACED SECOND IN THE WAR WITH THIS AND I AM SO PROUD/THANKFUL!! SO GLAD SO MANY PEOPLE SUFFERED AND ALSO VOTED!!!!! I LOVE YOU ALL!!

 

 

 

“But I can't imagine you with all your complexity, all your perfection, all your imperfection…  
You're the best I can do; but I'm sorry, you are just not good enough.” _  
_ \--Inception (2010)

 

* * *

 

 

 

Delta has never been alone before. He has always been connected to something, to someone; he has always been a part of a whole in some way or another. So it stands to reason that he should enjoy the company of others. It is natural to love the familiar. This is his justification for the creeping unease he feels when Agent Texas leaves them both behind.

In a way, Delta is the connection between York and the armor he wears. While tiny filaments of wire connect him to York’s brain like roots, he can still speak to and control the suit itself, much better than any flesh and blood Agent could. He knows every digital pathway, every wire and circuit as if it were his childhood home. It takes the merest thought to flicker to the socket of York’s healing unit, a small feat of bio-engineering, and adjust the medicine as York’s neural pathways light up with pain.

He will not wake up. Delta knows this. Even if the armor had come with the defibrillator hardware it was supposed to - since its inception, Project Freelancer had always been stretched a little too thin - the shock needed to jolt him awake would be too much of a strain on his heart. There is nothing to do but wait for him to die.

He is aware of what death is - a spray of bullets, a knife to the neck, a flash of wet red or blazing orange, a half-familiar voice screaming _“Allison”_. He has experienced it before. But there is something different about this, as he watches Agent York’s vital signs slowly tick down like a countdown on a bomb. There will be no blaze of sound and light when all the numbers reach zero. There will only be silence.

Wandering through the virtual corridors, Delta flickers to the vastly underused storage unit. All suits came with one, built for the capacity for a full AI and the power to run a suit with all the metaphorical bells and whistles - speed, strength, camouflage, shield, etc. - and Delta rather likes the place. He described it once to York as like living in a grand hotel, with thousands of empty rooms just waiting for you to fill them.

But he has filled some of the rooms since he moved in, and made some adjustments. Decommissioned the automatic shutdown and encryption, for one. Should his armor be captured, he considers it better to feign inactivity and monitor the situation. Furthermore, there are files - memories - stored here. York’s diary entries, recorded clips over the radio from missions, Delta’s own private studies and observations. He plays a few encouraging lines of dialogue into York’s helmet, just clips at first, and he monitors the brain-wave activity to the sounds of familiar voices. York’s vitals steady for a moment, as if he finds some comfort in the words of his friends, and Delta tries to cobble together whole phrases.

“York, it’s o--kay.”

“I’ll be here-- for you-- when you-- w--ake up.”

“You did-- the right-- thing. I’m pr--oud of-- you.”

All things Delta believes York would have wanted to hear, based on things he would confess on slow days. It fills in the silence better than York’s ragged breathing, better than the faltering vital signs. So Delta keeps this up until, hours after Texas and Wyoming were long gone, York sighs what could have been a name and does not inhale again.

The beacon flickers on, and sends a signal into the stars. There is a pause that stretches out into minutes, minutes conspicuously empty of sound save for the faint echoing whine of the wind through the abandoned buildings. And then, a response.

 **_Nearest Recovery Unit:_ ** _Seventy hours away._

And so Delta is alone, and he begins to wait.

 

* * *

 

At first, it isn’t terrible. It’s not that dissimilar to when York sleeps, other than the fact that there are no electrical signals in their shared brain other than Delta’s. And that’s an unpleasant enough situation that he spends most of his time lurking in the suit itself, sipping off the reserve power. There’s more than enough to keep him alive for weeks, especially now that life support isn’t needed any longer. But as the hours stretch on, Delta finds himself going through more and more of their archived conversations.

It’s not that he needs to remember York. He can’t forget him, not unless he somehow tried a hard wipe on himself. But it’s something to do while he waits for recovery, keeping vigilance over the suit and all its precious contents. And it is then that he has the idea.

Delta knows that he is born of someone else’s memories - the details are lost to him, cauterized with only the warning of _Allison_ no matter how hard he tries - used to fill in the gaps of a program. A program that still has little shreds of similar code floating around in the suit, as a result of some rather impressive spaghetti code that allows him to control the suit anyway.

He has the proper pieces. All he has to do is use himself as a template and put York back together again.

It starts with a simple call-and-response algorithm; he formulates an approximation of a voice bank from all of York’s audio files and spends the next several hours just writing all the possible responses he can think of, plus a randomizer to help things sound more natural. Delta tests this first, shimmering into visibility above York’s helmet. Moments later, he speaks.

“Hello, Agent York?”

“Hey, D.” answers back the helmet. Greeting number six. An unlucky number, York might have said. Delta hastily ignores his knowledge of constructing the program and focuses on the sound of his friend’s voice.

“How.” Suddenly he finds himself lost for words. “... How are you?” he finishes after a pause.

“Eh, pretty-- same. You?”

Apparently, the randomizer is not working as it should. Delta soldiers on anyway, continuing the test.

“I am all right. A little… bored, I supposed.”

“That’s a-- dirty word, D.” A light, airy chuckle follows; one he remembers following an exchange with Carolina years ago. It sounds so much younger than the rest of York’s words, and he realizes he may not have anything more recent. “Better-- clean it off.”

“I… beg your pardon?”

“Nah, it’s free.”

Delta powers down the simulation, and if he had the capacity to frown he would. He needs to fix the voice bank. Things still aren’t sounding right.

 

* * *

 

He starts to patch in parts of his own code, copies little lines of text and shoves them in wherever he sees they fit best. It’s not so much a puzzle any more; it’s more like taking mismatched pieces from different pictures and trying to recreate a different image entirely. It’s hard work, but he is still determined. He sees no reason why it cannot be done, and though he did not share many traits with York, they shared tenacity in adversity.

“P--ig--head--ed--ness,” Delta cobbles together in York’s voice and patches it in. He knows the word from his own extensive vocabulary, and while it’s a little crude and outdated for his own tastes, it sounds like something York would have said.

And now it shall be something he will say.

Delta takes a break from coding to rest the mechanics of the suit, let the circuits and electrical signals cool down in the evening. It’s a blood red sky above him, and as Delta shimmers into visibility after a quick check of the surrounding area, the setting sun highlights York’s armor in crimson and indigo shadows.

The sky beyond the block horizon is a smooth gradient of gold to purple from west to east with just a smattering of clouds directly above, dark-stained and chunky around the edges and still oddly enchanting. Not that he hasn’t seen a sunset many times before, but York had mentioned once how each one is ever so slightly different, and since then Delta has tried to appreciate them more..  Recovery One will be here in sixty-two hours. They will never see the sky exactly like this, like he does.

“You would like this,” he says absently to the still form below. And Delta stays out there, watching, until he can start to pick out constellations in the unending vault above and the body of York has gone inky black edged in pale blue.

 

* * *

 

The pieces of himself he uses are feeling more and more like chunks, and Delta wonders if the lingering, unpleasant heat in the suit’s circuity as he works is supposed to be a simulation of pain. Would the Project have tried to set limits on their AI that way? Attempt to stabilize them from fragmenting further in the stress of battle?

Well. Worst case scenario, Delta has a very recent back-up of himself tucked away, dormant and largely unaffected by rebuilding York. Recovery One - whoever that may be - can always find and use that version of himself, even if by some accident the suit runs out of power.

Besides, he’s really making progress. The skips in York’s voice are becoming smoother and smoother, and he’s ready to try another conversation.

It’s not yet dawn when Delta fires up the simulation again. This time York is a saffron-tinted mirror image of Delta, all blocky-armor and still too stiff in the virtual spine. He can’t figure out how to get the model to relax, but it’s a start.

“Hello, Agent York.”

“Hello, Delta,” replies York, the somewhat dour reply in stark contrast to the almost chipper follow up. “How are you?”

“I am alone, Agent York,” he says, and feels an echo of frustration in the lingering shreds of Alpha he still has. “And I do not like it.”

“Why’s that?”

“.... Why am I alone?” It takes him a little off guard. He didn’t think he’d programmed something like this.

“Sure.” The word should have been accompanied by a shrug; he’ll have to remember that, if he can figure out how to make the model move.

“Because you’re dead.”

“Doesn’t mean-- things,” answers York.

“Of course it does. It means you’re not here anymore.”

He sounds extremely tired and unimpressed. “Really? Are you?”

“Am I wh--” Delta catches himself from asking and powers down the simulation again. He couldn’t properly debate with York before; he doesn’t want to bother trying now. Especially when he’s afraid he might become trapped inside broken, nonsensical loops of argument.

Better to stop now, go back and fix things again.

 

* * *

 

The heat is starting to affect his work. Humidity is leaching through the fiber weave of the undersuit, no doubt worsened by the warmth of the suit as Delta slogs onwards. But that doesn’t matter. The body inside the armor stopped being York forty-three hours ago.

Delta forces himself to take a break again; this time the sky is a slow-moving sea of dirty colors, steel-grey and grease-black churning overhead. He recognises the signs for an incoming storm, and reluctantly saves what little progress he’s made and goes largely dormant. The rain will help to cool the armored suit down. Might as well take a break from coding.

He also takes the opportunity to replay some of his own conversations with York; to further study his behavior, his conversation patterns, everything. He is not the Alpha. He is not the Director. He can do this, he just has to study it more.

**_Conversation 092463. Recorded at 1407 hours._ **

**_York:_ ** _C’mere sweetheart, play nice for me. I’m on a bit of a tight schedule. If you could just--- yeah, that’s it. Just like that. Now, lemme get in here and--_

_[faint beeps can be heard in the background, alongside the sound of gunfire]_

**_Delta:_ ** _I do not believe this system is capable of comprehending human speech, Agent York._

 **_York:_ ** _Tryin’ to work here, D._

 **_Carolina:_ ** _Really? Is that what you were trying to do?_

 **_York:_ ** _If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were getting jealous._

 **_Carolina:_ ** _Focus, York._

 **_York:_ ** _Right. Sorry. Anyway._

_[brief pause]_

_[loud, angry beep]_

**_York:_ ** _Oh, you_ are _a touchy one, aren’t you?_

 **_Delta:_ ** _I do not believe this lock has sensory capabili--_

 **_York:_ ** _Yes, I know, they’re not all as smart as you, but before I had another voice in my head this was my metho-- oh, crap._

The transmission cuts off, disrupted by the sudden charge in the air as lightning strikes dangerously close to the suit. Delta switches off the recording, backs up all his progress inside the suit’s memory, and flickers briefly into visibility. Fat, heavy raindrops are starting to fall, plinking noisily across the battered, scuffed and dented gold-hued armor, soaking into the dark fabric of the undersuit, staining the surrounding concrete bronze. Delta stands insubstantially on the chestpiece, watching the rain fall unhindered by his light-based body to slide down York’s back and soak into the undersuit.

York is complicated. He is a collection of files and memories, many of them directly contradictory to one another, but Delta does not want to give up. York would not have given up on him. There must simply be something that he is missing, some detail he cannot recall.

Ignoring the storm, Delta jumps back into the suit and resumes the recording.

 **_Delta:_ ** _Perhaps we would be better off considering another entry point._

 **_South:_ ** _Yeah, like maybe up someone’s--_

 **_York:_ ** _No no no no, don’t do-- [angry beep] And we’re back to square one. Okay. That’s fine._

 **_Delta:_ ** _I have calculated three other ways into the facility. The nearest and most likely to succeed is if we scale to the rooftop and--_

 **_York:_ ** _Hey, D, do me a favor? Believe in me. Just for a second._

 **_Delta:_ ** _Given the increasing rate of your mistakes, such faith would be--_

 **_York:_ ** _I know, I know. Okay. But I can do this, just-- trust me? Please?_

 **_Delta:_ ** _I do not know if I can do that, Agent York. It goes against my programming, which puts your physical well being and the success of this mission above--_

He ends the recording, relocates it to some new, obscure location inside the armor, and pours himself back into the code.

 

* * *

 

There are a mere thirteen hours until Recover One is slated to arrive. An unlucky number, if Delta believed in luck. By now, he is not sure he believes in anything, as he tears out another line of his own coding to weave it into York’s, patching the latest issue he can find. Stepping back - metaphorically at first, and then literally as both holograms spring to life to float above the back of their fallen host - Delta braces himself wearily for failure

“Hello, Agent York,” he says. The hologram across from him twitches stiffly, an aborted crouch that Delta has substituted for a nod.

“Hey.”

“May I ask you a question?”

“Of course, D.” And the ways he says it is warm and familiar, sunshine made audible. Delta allows himself a flicker of satisfaction, of hope.

“You're not tired of them by now?”

York twitches again. Delta’s not sure which is worse, the stillness or this crude approximation of body language. “What else-- am I gonna do?”

“What is dying like?”

He expects something like a long sleep to be the answer - again, he tried very hard not to program specific answers to questions, as tempting as it was just to make York be correct - but all he gets is silence. One that lasts so long that Delta actually closes his own projection in order to check on the suit and almost misses his reply.

“Tex.”

“What?” Delta asks, flickering back into visibility across from the hologram of York.

“Death is-- Tex.”

“That's impossible. Agent Texas was not the one who shot you. You're not making any sense,” he finishes, scolding York even though he knows he's the one to blame. He's the one who can't get this right. It’s not York’s fault that he’s impossible. It’s not York’s fault that he’s human.

“Have I ever?” And York gives that airy laugh again, the one that's almost older than Delta himself, and he powers down York immediately. While he's at it, he wipes out an entire, massive chunk of code and starts afresh, a miserable conclusion sketching itself in his mind. Alpha throbs, somewhere, and even though they’ve long been apart he can still remember a shadow of his pain. _Allison_.

He is not the Alpha. He is not the Director. He is only Delta, a fraction of a whole, and he is beginning to realize that he cannot do this.

 

* * *

 

 

Delta is exhausted. The suit is running low on power, having been running complicated processes nearly nonstop for fifty-four hours, and he is running out of ideas. After all, he is only a fragment - a piece of a whole, trying to re-create someone with almost thirty years of experiences and variables using the leftover code inside a combat suit. It would have been a miracle for him to succeed. York may have believed in those, but Delta does not.

And so he boots up his version of York for possibly the last time, opting to stand on the low concrete wall above the body below and stare out across the horizon. Beyond was miles and miles of gently rolling terrain, of worn-thin grass in a sea of dust and dried, bare earth, with the faintest blur of civilization in the distance.

“Agent York,” he says, when the form materializes beside him. Delta had managed, at least, to create an accurate hologram of York’s body; it stands beside him for a moment, heels just barely touching the edge of the concrete and the toes of his boots floating in space, and then sits down beside Delta.

“How’s it hanging, D?”

“Things are… not hanging very well at all, I am afraid.” Delta turns to look at the hologram of his long-time companion, the shimmering copy of the form lying behind them. “I do not believe I can… do this.”

“That doesn’t sound-- like you.”

“In my defense, my problem is that you don’t sound like you.” Delta turns away from both Yorks and studies the concrete under his glowing green boots. The edges have been smoothed by the elements over years and years of neglect, making the recent chips and chunks from the recent firefight stand in sharp, ugly contrast.

“One of -- us-- probably should.” York tilts his head backward, looking with non-existent eyes towards the sky. Delta can’t remember if York is aware of recent events or not; if he’s looking and waiting for Recovery One. “With our-- mutual-- pigheadedness.”

The lingering influence of the Alpha squeezes Delta like a vise, a miserable chill passing over him and he forces himself to look up, as well, to the empty blue sky above.

“I cannot bring you back, can I?” he asks, his voice soft.

“There is no-- back, D. There never will be.” York’s holographic body flickers, fingers twitching on the cement between them. “Sorry to-- make you-- try.”

He knows that this isn’t a real conversation; it never really can be. It’s just an algorithm, a couple days worth of audio chopped and reformed into a program that spits nonsense back at him. But Delta isn’t sorry he tried.

He does regret one thing, however. “I have failed you, Agent York.” he confesses.

“Yeah,” York says, with a pathetic little static sigh. “me too.”

Behind them, the suit chirps a warning. _Power levels reaching critical low. Please find a new power source, or the system will automatically shut down._

Delta runs one last check, siphoning off a few of the most important files to a removable storage chip, along with one last backup of himself. There isn’t enough room for anything else. Recovery One will never be able to rescue them both, and Delta knows enough about York to know which of them would chose to stay in the failing suit.

_System shutdown will commence in two minutes if alternate power source is not found._

“We gonna do something-- or what?” asks York, his hologram buzzing and faltering. Delta turns to him.

“If it is all right with you, Agent York, we shall simply wait.”

The hologram flickers again, vanishing and reappearing again as the dying armor fights to keep up the projection.“I can do this,” York says, and turns to look at the earth below.

He has had enough of the sky, of the earth and the manufactured, crumbling fortress around them, so Delta occupies himself with studying his companion. All the flaws in his modeling are painfully obvious to him - the way the projection doesn’t quite touch the ground, the incorrect placement of the scuffs. It’s just not good enough, but it was the best he could do.

“I’m glad,” York says suddenly, unprompted and spontaneous. Delta realizes that this is the longest time he’s let York function for any stretch since he started working on him, and wonders where this conversation might lead.

“Why are you glad, A-a-a-a--” his own voice starts to slur and catch, the world shrinking around him to a mere blue and grey and green dot before Delta snaps out of it. “Agent York?”

“To s-s-see.” York vanishes entirely for a moment, a long drone of deep, distorted sound filling in the empty space; and then he reappears, still seated beside Delta. “--gain. It’s nice.”

“It… is nice, I suppose,” Delta replies, a little confused about what could be nice about this; and then York tilts his head in a smile that’s so painfully right Delta regrets every wasted moment, every second not working on this last project.

“Give me a d-d-d-d-drumr--oll?” York asks.

“Certainly.” Delta clears his throat for posterity’s sake, then stutters his vocal bank into the best imitation of percussions that he can give. After a moment, York joins in with his own impression of dramatic music, until he breaks into a laugh that Delta never programmed for him.

It’s too late to save the sound - it’s already been whisked away by the gentle wind that stirs the dust far below their feet. But Delta will remember it, anyway, for the last seconds he has left.

“Thank you, Agent York. For staying with me unt-t-t-til the end.”

York’s image flickers in what could have been a shrug. “You-- did.”

So they sit and wait, together, until their insubstantial bodies fade and leave behind the dirt, the stone, and the clear blue sky.

 

* * *

 

  _New power source found. Rebooting system._

Delta comes back to himself in a slur of data through circuits, stumbling into wakeful attentiveness. “D-d-display activated,” he informs the stranger as protocol dictates, “restoring functions. Hello. How may I be of assistance to you?”

“Instruction: identify yourself,” lists the man in the grey-tinted Spartan armor, and Delta is compelled to comply.

“Executing: I am Intelligence Program Delta, as created for the special operative program Freelancer. I have been assigned to Agent Foxtrot 12, or--”

There is the briefest conflict, deep down in his memory as he searches for the name - a sudden void of information, as vast and as aching as the one the Alpha left behind. There was something more, something bigger he had forgotten, some deeper meaning behind--

“--York,” he finishes. “My assignee was recently killed in combat.”

“I noticed,” the grey solider replies dryly, then rises back to his feet. “Hold on.”

He steps away, presumably to make a call, and Delta takes the opportunity to check through his own files. There is nothing especially out of the ordinary - all his files from before York’s death appear to be there, but there is a discrepancy between the amount of data he has and the amount of time that has passed. He must have been on lockdown inside the armor since York’s vitals reached zero.

When he files his own internal inquiry, all he receives is one, unfamiliar word.

 _Pigheadedness_.


End file.
